The air of the room hung heavy with smoke from the doctor’s cigarette. The draught kept us from opening the windows. It would have been silent—but my mother had protested when I tried to smash the cuckoo clock on the wall. So now, it wasn’t silent.
Selma looked dead. If I was anyone else, I’d say that she looked beautiful, even with the sunken cheeks and the skin-wrapped bones that passed for her limbs.
The doctor took his eyes off of her, and searched for the ashtray, which he was pleased to find was sitting nearby. After tapping his cigarette on it, he resumed smoking, lighting up a tiny little orange-red circle at the end of the cigarette.
“If you just want to pay your respects, we could invite you at the funeral,” I said. It was not meant kindly. I’d learned how to say things like that from my mother—how you can take a word and wrap a handkerchief around it, so that you can stab with it less conspicuously.
The doctor tapped off some more ash and sniffled. “No, I can heal her,” he said at last. He seemed tired, but that should not be surprising. It was nearly 9 pm, and there was no telling how long he had been working all day.
“Do you want to?” I asked.
The doctor took a deep breath, which resulted in more of a wheeze, and and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “But I need the patient to co-operate with me.”
I looked at Selma, who looked dead, and I imagined her hand shaking. I imagined what her moan would sound like, as she came to. If she came to.
The doctor shook his head before I could say something mean to him.
“You called me here because you know me and what I do, right?” he asked. “Then you have to let me do my thing. Being impatient and passive aggressive won’t bring your wife back any faster.”
“What exactly is your thing?” I asked. “I only called you because I heard you were a doctor around these parts. We only moved in here last month.”
Now the doctor looked at me with eyes that looked at once endangered and curious. He loosed his tie a little. “Oh,” he said. “That explains a lot.”
After rubbing his eyes with two fingers, he sighed. “Look, I am in contact with your wife—telepathically. I can tune my mind into hers, and we’re trying to negotiate a healing. She isn’t co-operating, though, maybe because she’s not used to what I do. Now I understand why she’s being so resistant to her own treatment: your family is not from around here.”
I held up a hand. “What exactly do you do?” I asked. “What is the negotiation about? What are you talking about?”
The doctor chuckled, which shook his entire body. “Funny, you ask the same questions she does, and in the exact same way she does.” After composing himself some, he resumed. “I offer to heal your wife from his situation, and in exchange, she will pay me with some of her lifespan. That’s the best I can do.”